Canon S90 and G11 Announced

Normally I wouldn’t care when new compact point and shoot cameras are introduced to market, since no matter how good they are, they tend to fall short of my needs.  SLRs tend to be the only cameras with both the image quality and the speed that will get the job done well.  I also don’t expect to use this blog to write much about new products or announcments, since those can be found all over the internet.  However, I wanted to mention these two compacts because they’re pretty significant, I think, especially for Canon.

I’ll start with the G11:

The new 'pro' compact

First off, I have little interest in this camera.  The reason for me to have a compact camera would be for those times when I am already laden with enough stuff that I don’t want to lug a DSLR and lenses around with me.  It would be for those times when I have both my son Isaac and my goddaughter Lila and all their accoutrements, and just want to leave that 70-200 f/2.8 at home.  This camera sort of fits the bill, but not really–it’s too big, too bulky, too heavy to really be a suitable replacement.  But it is a fine camera.  It has a fast lens (f/2.8 at its fastest), a decent zoom range (28-140mm equivalent), and it shoots RAW.  What’s really notable about this new camera, though, is its image sensor–no, it’s not the APS-C size sensor we’ve been hoping for.  No, we don’t really know yet how good it is.  BUT–and this is an important but–it has LESS megapixels than its predecessor, the G10.  For Canon, a HUGE electronics company and camera industry leader, to drop out of the mp race to focus on better IQ, is a big deal.  It’s at least noteworthy.  Definitely enough to make people think that maybe, just maybe, those big impersonal camera companies are actually paying a little bit of attention to the things that matter.  In any case, this should be a very fine compact indeed, but it’s expensive, it’s too big, and probably is really too slow to fill in as an SLR substitute.

And that’s where the S90 comes in.

The new S90 uses the same sensor as the G11, and has a faster lens!

The S90 is cool: it’s a true compact, it has a faster, f/2.0 lens, it’s black, it shoots RAW, it has full manual control.  It’s probably too slow to use (long shutter lag, poor AF for moving subjects) like the G11 and other compacts, and its zoom range is a little on the short side (28-105mm equivalent), but who cares?  It’s pocketable, it’s controllable, it looks like it will have great IQ, and it’s cheaper than the G11.  If you look at the above photo, you’ll see little rings around the lens–you can use those to quickly change settings, rather than having to dive into menus.  Those little rings make it better than a G11–no protruding adjustment knobs–and better than most compacts, since they give you control.

I’m not going to go into depth about the specs on each of these cameras, since it’s easy to find those on the net–heck, you can even just follow the links in this post!  But I did want to mention/highlight these new cameras since I believe that even though they may not mark a new long-term trend for Canon, they at least suggest that Canon is working on maintaining their class leading imaging sensors, high ISO noise, and overall IQ.

The only other really notable thing about these two compacts is that they were announced on a day most of us were expecting Canon to announce some exciting new pro and semi-pro DSLRs… guess we’ll have to wait till September for those.